James L. Paris's Blog, page 145
August 27, 2016
Pew Research: Americans Walking Away from God
If you���ve been thinking, based on what you read and hear in the news, as well as what���s out there on social media, that America must be moving away from God, because there���s no way a Godly nation would be capable of reflecting the values in vogue all around us���you would appear to be correct. The Pew Research Center announced on Wednesday the results of a survey that determined about half of those who���ve left their church simply do not believe in God anymore.
According to reporting done by the Washington Examiner, 49 percent of those who dumped their church did so because they simply ���don���t believe��� any longer.
Pew���s write-up on the survey results says, in part, that roughly ���Bottom of Form
half of current religious 'nones' who were raised in a religion (49%) indicate that a lack of belief led them to move away from religion. This includes many respondents who mention 'science' as the reason they do not believe in religious teachings, including one who said 'I'm a scientist now, and I don't believe in miracles.' Others reference 'common sense,' 'logic' or a 'lack of evidence' ��� or simply say they do not believe in God.���
Following are examples of reasons why people ���don���t believe,��� as recorded by Pew during the course of the research:
���Learning about evolution when I went away to college.���
���Too many Christians doing un-Christian things.���
���Religion is the opiate of the people.���
���Rational thought makes religion go out the window.���
���Lack of any sort of scientific or specific evidence of a creator.���
���I just realized somewhere along the line that I didn���t really believe it.���
���I���m doing a lot more learning, studying���and kind of making decisions myself rather than listening to someone else.���
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
76-Year-Old Vet Commits Suicide in Parking Lot of V.A. Hospital
It���s not enough the Veterans Administration is leaving people to die awaiting treatment at its facilities. Now, apparently, the quality of care is still so lousy that patients are being driven to pull out guns and kill themselves as a way to exit the hell in which they find themselves stranded.
And yet the mess that is the V.A. is still not so bad, evidently, that those in positions of appropriate authority are stopping everything else to focus on straightening the problems out, once and for all.
In what can only be seen as a genuine tragedy, a 76-year-old vet, Peter A. Kaisen, blew his brains out this past Sunday in the parking lot of the Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center, which is located on Long Island, New York.
According to reporting by The New York Times, while it is not yet known with certainty why Mr. Kaisen killed himself, a couple of people associated with Northport, who spoke on a condition of anonymity, confirmed that he had been very distressed over his inability to see an emergency room doctor about his mental health. As quoted by the Times, one of the sources said, ���He went to the E.R. and was denied service. And then he went to his car and shot himself.���
���Someone dropped the ball. They should not have turned him away.���
Business as usual at the V.A., apparently.
The F.B.I. is conducting the investigation into Kaisen���s death, due to the fact he died on federal property.
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
August 26, 2016
Tyler Perry Gets an Earful for Casting Only Whites in His New Show
One of Hollywood���s brightest lights, Tyler Perry, who has found mega-stardom as a director, producer, actor, and screenwriter, is catching a not-insignificant amount of heat for casting only white actors in his latest project, a drama series for TLC television network called Too Close to Home.
Perry, who is black, has historically created movies and TV shows centered on black characters, and so, naturally, the casts of those productions have been predominantly African-American. However, with Too Close to Home, Perry has created a show about a rising female political star���in this case, a white one���who encounters scandal and finds herself returned to her working class roots, and it is the case that nearly all of the characters in Perry���s latest show are white.
Many in the black community have taken issue with Perry���s decision to ���abandon��� what they apparently see as his ���own��� demographic, and see the matter as one of acute importance, given the broad narrative that has taken root in recent years that people of color are underrepresented in Hollywood.
Perry is apparently having none of it, however. Earlier this week, during an appearance on the Tom Joyner Morning Show, the director said, ���I���m so sick of folks asking me why I have a show full of white folks. Nobody asked Norman Lear why he wrote for black people all those years. People are people. I���m writing a story about a girl that comes from a trailer park and whose family has a lot of dysfunction. That can happen whether you���re black or white.���
When Perry was separately asked by a TMZ reporter about the casting decision, he shot back, ���Are you really asking me about that? That���s so ridiculous, man. People are people. People just need to let ��� it���s ridiculous. If you write a story about a woman and a man who���s having pain and issues and trying to get over things, it���s the same way for a black person as a white person.���
For my part, the fact that there are people offended that Perry did not cast black people in a show about a scandal-bitten politico who ends up back in a trailer park���should tell you everything you need to know about how bizarre some elements of the race narrative in this country have become.
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
Is It Possible the U.S. and Russia are Actually Moving Closer to Nuclear War?
Even though a news story published by EurActiv.com several days ago about the U.S. moving its nuclear weapons from Turkey to Romania is being hotly disputed in some circles, many question if the overall posture of both Russia and America of late hasn���t been suggestive of an uptick in at least the risk of nuclear war between the former Soviet Union and the United States.
According to EurActiv, America is moving the nukes because of the deterioration in relations between Washington and Ankara. It is believed that the U.S. has kept about 50 tactical nuclear weapons stationed at Incirlik Air Base since the conclusion of the Cold War. According to EurActiv, America saw just how fraught with risk its continued harboring of nukes at Incirlik was, when, during the coup attempt in July, power to the base was cut, Turkey���s government prevented U.S. aircraft from flying in or out of Incirlik, and the base commander was apprehended for his alleged role in the coup.
In the wake of this turmoil, there are reports that the U.S. is moving its nukes from Incirlik to an air base near Deveselu, Romania, and that Russia is irate at the move, given the proximity of the missiles��� new home to the Russian border. However, a Foreign Policy article dated two days after the publication of EurActiv���s story said ���there doesn���t seem to be any basis at all for the report,��� and citing, in addition to strong denials by the Romanian government, technically-based reasons why such a move would not be feasible.
For their part, however, Russia, according to reports, has been busily making preparations to effectively defend itself in the event of nuclear war. About a week ago, the Daily Mail Online reported that Russia has been in the midst, for some years now, of building numerous underground bunkers throughout the country, bunkers capable of withstanding the effects of a nuclear attack. The article quotes Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, USA, who said, ���It is clear that Russia is modernizing its strategic forces. Russian doctrine states that tactical nuclear weapons may be used in a conventional response scenario.���
The article also quotes Mark Schneider, a former nuclear policy official with the Pentagon, who recently told the Washington Free Beacon, ���Russia is getting ready for a big war which they assume will go nuclear, with them launching the first attacks.���
What seems to have captured the attention of analysts is the possibility of the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons inside of a conventional conflict, as referenced by Gen. Scaparrotti. Few policy wonks think now in terms of the ���nuclear holocaust��� that had so many living in fear decades ago. Today, it is considered more likely that a nuclear conflict on a more limited scale could occur, and that a greater acceptance of that scenario by both the U.S. and Russia makes such an eventuality more likely.
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
August 25, 2016
Investigative Reporter: FBI Files Linking Hillary Clinton to Vince Foster Suicide Now Missing
Esteemed investigative reporter Ronald Kessler, who worked in that capacity for such papers as The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, and who has authored several bestselling ���insider��� books, including The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents and The Secrets of the FBI, is reporting, in an exclusive for the Daily Mail Online, that reports lodged by FBI agents as to the role Hillary Clinton���s cruel treatment of Vince Foster played in his death���are now missing.
You may recall that back when she was First Lady, Hillary Clinton was a staunch proponent of so-called ���health care reform.��� Well, back in July 1993, when Mrs. Clinton assembled Foster, who was deputy White House counsel at the time, and other aides for the purpose of discussing her own health care proposal, Foster cited a ���legal objection��� to said proposal during the meeting, which prompted Hillary to go into a tirade, according to reports. Citing information he received from former FBI agents Coy Copeland and Jim Clemente, Ronald Kessler says that Hillary ���ridiculed��� Foster ���in front of his peers��� at the meeting. At one point, according to former agent Clemente, Hillary said flatly to Foster, ���You have failed us.���
A week later, Foster was found dead along the Potomac River, with a gunshot wound to the head. A .38 caliber revolver was in his hand when he was discovered.
According to his piece for the Daily Mail, Kessler traveled, on two separate occasions, to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in College Park, Md., for the purpose of accessing the reports of the agents who were responsible for investigating Foster���s death.
On each of his visits, Kessler was handed, by two different staff members, records that were purported to include the reports of the investigating FBI agents on the Clinton-Foster meeting at issue, but he found none of that information in the documents he was given.
Kessler followed up by filing a Freedom of Information request with the National Archives, and heard back from NARA���s public liaison, Martha Murphy, who informed Kessler, via email, that the ���senior archivist��� she dispatched to do a more careful and comprehensive review ���examined all eight boxes but found no interviews by any investigator that detail either a meeting between Hillary Clinton and Vince Foster or the effects of a meeting between Hillary Clinton and Vince Foster on Vince Foster's state of mind.���
More to follow? We���ll see.
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
77 Percent of Non-White Voters Fine with Voter ID Laws
Democrats may go on and on about how ���unfair��� voter ID laws are to certain demographics in the United States, but, according to a recent poll done by the Gallup organization, the vast majority of American voters���including non-white voters���are just fine with voter ID laws.
The fact is, unless you���re a lunatic, voter ID laws make all the sense in the world, which means they make sense to the clear majority of the members of whatever demographic group you want to ask.
The poll, the results of which were published over at Gallup.com on Monday, reveals that Americans harbor a significantly favorable view of voter ID laws across the board; even Democrats, as a group, clearly favor voter ID laws, it turns out, although it shouldn���t come as a tremendous shock to anyone that support among Dems was weakest (63%), in comparison to the support from Republicans (95%) and Independents (83%).
Overall, Americans support voter ID laws to the tune of 80%. That���s still far too low, in my opinion, but at least it���s a fairly strong number.
Of particular interest to me are the results based on race. While it was not a shock to learn from the poll that 81% of whites support voter ID laws, it likely came as a surprise to many that 77% of non-whites also support such laws.
It doesn���t surprise me. Unlike my Dem counterparts, I don���t walk around assuming that members of so-called minority groups are in favor of lawless societies, as though that���s the only way they can achieve social and economic uplift. I leave it to the Democrats to do that, and they never disappoint.
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
August 24, 2016
Professor Says Fix Climate Change By Refraining from Having Kids
Travis Rieder, he of Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, says that the answer to fixing the climate change problem is for people to simply stop having kids.
Rieder says that the best way to protect kids, as we all supposedly stare down the barrel of the climate change gun, is ���by not having them.���
You see, in the world of the climate change alarmists, it is the existence of people that serves as the ultimate source of the problem. Here���s why: You may have heard of ���greenhouse gases,��� which are responsible for creating a ���greenhouse��� effect in the earth���s atmosphere, as they absorb infrared radiation and end up making the earth warmer. Well, carbon dioxide is one of the principal greenhouse gases, and enters the earth���s atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels ��� coal, natural gas, and oil; and who is responsible for the burning of these fossil fuels? People.
That is, in a nutshell, at what Rieder is getting. If there are many fewer of us, then the collective ���carbon footprint��� left by the earth���s population will be smaller, and greenhouse gas emissions would be much lower.
Rieder sees the possibility of a global fertility rate dropping to a half-child for each woman as ���the thing that saves us.��� Rieder proposes that, in poorer countries, women should be paid to refill their birth control, while in richer nations���which are more responsible for higher greenhouse gas emissions, anyway���more draconian measures could be put in place, like getting rid of tax breaks associated with having kids, and even instituting penalties for new parents.
Wow.
As Marc Morano of Climate Depot, a website that seeks to debunk the progressive-oriented arguments about global warming, says, ���The warmists have now graduated from regulating our light bulbs, coal plants and SUVs to regulating our family size.���
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
$70 Million for a New Football Stadium in Texas���a HIGH SCHOOL Football Stadium
I love high school football. My son, a great player during his high school years, was a joy to watch on fall Friday nights, but, even putting that aside, the whole high school football ���thing��� was right up my alley. For me, it remains the purest form of the game.
I could not imagine, though, having watched my kid each of those Friday nights from inside a game facility costing tens of millions of dollars���but an increasing number of high school parents are able to say that very thing, and, in one school district in north Texas, the 2017 high school football season will bring with it the opportunity for local parents to watch their kids play in something pretty special, as expensive stadiums go.
McKinney Independent School District, which sits some miles north of Dallas, is in the process of building what is reportedly going to be the most expensive high school football stadium in the entire country; the price tag, when all is said and done, is expected to be $70 million.
$70 million for a high school football stadium.
Now, I���m actually not one of those people who are jumping on the ���$70 million for football and no money toward academics��� bandwagon. For one thing, the way this stadium is being funded, through a taxpayer-approved bond offering, means that the residents voted for the use of public funds in this way, and there is no money being taken from academics for the purpose of building this stadium. In this case, athletics and academics are truly separate. It���s important to underline, as well, that because the bond offering was proposed for this specific effort, the money generated from it cannot be used for anything else.
Additionally, this is a relatively well-heeled area, and other components of the community���or of the school, for that matter���are not suffering or otherwise going without because of the money spent on the stadium. Everyone seems to be doing just fine in McKinney.
Still, while it���s fine to breathlessly point out that the method of procurement of funds for this project, as well as the application of same, is fundamentally sound���in the end, it seems like it says a little something that so much money is being used to build a high school football stadium.
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
August 23, 2016
An Atheist In Heaven?
What happens when a steadfast atheist dies and discovers he was wrong about life after death? Although he was a world famous futurist and a pioneering promoter of science fiction books and films, Forrest J. Ackerman never believed in an afterlife of the soul, the spirit or the mind; nonetheless, he promised a few respected colleagues that if it were to turn out that he was mistaken (which he sincerely doubted), then if it were possible he would try to send messages from the beyond. Author Paul Davids discusses his book and views on life after death.
Will The Olympics Survive?
On this episode Jim starts by discussing the historically low ratings for the Rio Olympics and what the future will be for the international competition. Boy band creator and convicted scam artist, Lou Pearlman dies in prison at the age of 62, Leonardo DiCaprio and the Malaysian money scandal, back to school IRS scam, and a new way that thieves are using the mail to steal your identity.
